Take All Myself
by LunaSphere
Summary: Autor works through a broken heart the only way he knows how, with dictionaries.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So I thought I'd try my hand at an Autor fic. The premise for this fic was sparked by something **Thyme in Her Eyes **said in a review to my story "Grace" about Rue's name. A big, belated thanks to her.

Summary: Autor works through a broken heart the only way he knows how, with dictionaries.

Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu or any quoted or cited material.

* * *

_And for that name which is no part of thee  
Take all myself.  
_

_--Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet_

The memory of her, the wine-red eyes, the black silk hair haunts him like the title of a book he can't quite remember but wants to, desperately.

_Rue_, Autor says the name he has overheard in the empty chattering of other ballet students . _Rue _he sighs reverently in his mind and looks for it in the musty pages of forgotten books because looking upon her in the flesh is almost too much. His heart feels it will burst from longing whenever he catches even a glimpse of her. He will offer it to her again, he dreams, and this time she will accept.

He finds glimpses of her everywhere. In ancient bestiaries, he learns that only rue alone of all plants is impervious to the deadly breath of the basilisk, which causes all vegetation to wilt and stones to crack. _Only rue alone can withstand_…and all the rest of the words are meaningless. _O beloved_, he thinks. _Only Rue_, he thinks.

From there, he turns to books of medicinal lore, hoping to catch a glance of her again and finds in her place delicate illustrations of small looping silver leaves. _Rue_, the yellowed pages whisper to him, _an herb of remembrance, of warding and healing. The bitterness of the leaves_…what does he care for the rest? _O love, remember_ he sighs.

In dictionaries of dead languages he embraces her, Rue _derived from reuo - to set free, because this herb is so efficacious in various diseases_. And he holds the knowledge close to himself, close to his heart and wishes, _O heart, never set me free_.

But most of all, he seeks her in lines of poetry, holding her in his arms in meter and rhyme. "With rue my heart is laden," _yes that is it, that is exactly it_. He echoes the line to himself, not caring for the rest of the poem. Context no longer matters, the words that follow no longer matter because she is the only context, her name the only word in the world, and theirs is the only story he wishes to read. _O, my very own rose-lipt maiden_, he sighs in the chambers of his heart over and over again and forgets all the rest (1)

_Rue rue rue _his heart cries and he loses himself in the strange pleasing pain of love.

* * *

He learns much later, when all is over and she is as beyond his grasp as a character from a book, just what role she played in Drosselmeyer's fairytale. He sets aside Fakir's manuscript, feeling utterly utterly lost, as if the words he has been reading his whole life have meant something else entirely and no one had ever told him. She has her prince, a fairytale prince and there is no possible way he can ever hope to compete…

"But what's her real name?" he asks, his voice still numb from shock, betrayal.

"Whose?"

"The raven princess," Autor snaps, impatient with Fakir's obtuseness. "The human girl spirited away by the monster raven, and renamed Kraehe in his own image and then Rue in her own. What's her true name?"

"What does that matter?" Fakir snaps back, impatient now in his own right. "I wanted your opinion on the ending, not on the parts Drosselmeyer wrote--"

But Autor is no longer listening, he no longer cares for the rest. If she is not Rue, who is the girl he has been searching for in dictionaries and volumes of poetry, on faded parchment and freshly printed paper? If she is not all the lines and passages he has committed to his heart searching for _Rue_, who is she?

"A princess under a spell," he breathes in wonder.

"What are you going on about? Forget it. I'll finish it on my own." Fakir snatches the manuscript back and stalks from the room.

Autor has no time for him now.

If he can just uncover her real name, he is sure, she will step out of the story she has entered and become a real girl, not a princess beyond his grasp. When he finds her true name, she will leave behind fairytales and return to the real world. Like a spell broken with a magic word just at the edge of reality and memory.

It is an impossible task, a part of him whispers, but he has performed impossible tasks before, unearthed all the stories written on Goldcrown Town itself when no one else even thought to look. Town records, genealogies, dictionaries--surely his heart will know when he glances at her true name--he will scour them all and find her, his own rose-lipt maiden.

It is an impossible task, a part of him whispers, like writing. Elusive as all the ideas that seem to escape him when he wants to put them on paper, shadows refusing to be caged.

He takes down the first volume of the dictionary.

* * *

_(1) This is a line from a poem by A.E. Housman:_

_With rue my heart is laden  
For golden friends I had,  
For many a rose-lipt maiden  
And many a lightfoot lad._

_By brooks too broad for leaping  
The lightfoot boys are laid;  
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping  
In fields where roses fade_


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Um. Somehow feeling stressed/overworked makes me write weird fic?

* * *

Freya did not like libraries. In fact, she avoided being indoors at all as much as she could—it felt so lonely when she couldn't feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, hear the voices of the living world around her. There never seemed to be enough windows, not enough light, too little air, too little life and the Academy library was one of the worst offenders in this sense. But she really had no other choice.

She had tried asking the flowerseller first, but he was as much at a loss as she was and since she could not bear that any plant be unhappy in her garden, she at last resigned herself to searching among books. But the poor wilting roses needed her, they were in such pain and she had to learn why so she could help them.

Freya sighed and stepped into the gloom of the Academy library. Hardly any windows at all. She had wandered uncertainly until a boy carrying far too many books to see where he was going had jostled her. Books and papers teetered precariously in the stack in his arms and she hastened to help him as he glared at her in irritation. Her eyes trailed over the titles he carried, and she was pleasantly surprised to see so many of her friends well represented here, daffodils, cornflowers, azaleas and on the very top, _Roses: Naming and Varieties._

She asked, as she helped him straighten the pile of books into a more stable tower, "Do you know where I can find books on roses?"

He'd seemed to look at her without really seeing her, and gesturing her in the right direction, had murmured absently to himself, "Hmmm, 'A rose is a rose is a rose.' Yes, perhaps that's it..." And she had smiled gently at his departing back. Perhaps he understood too, that there are some things only roses could tell you.

As she emerged from the reference shelves with a much smaller stack of her own, she caught another glimpse of him, seated at one of the empty tables, his head bowed over the book before him. She considered him, his dark hair glinting almost violet and hesitated only a moment before finding a spot nearby. It was like discovering the first crocuses of February: an unexpected patch of color and familiarity that brought joy to her heart. He seemed to care about the flowers just as much as she did. He would be her breath of fresh air in this lifeless place. She couldn't be outside, but at least she could work beside a kindred spirit, someone so lost in his study of the colored plates of delicately sketched plants that he did not even notice her smiling at him.

Somehow, as he sat there so absorbed and so alone, he reminded her of a thistle, prickly and solitary and unexpectedly beautiful, a flash of purple that was all the more striking because it seemed out of place. She didn't find what she was looking for that day, but as Freya left the library, her head full of aphids and snails and not enough sun and half a dozen other culprits, a small part of her wondered what color his eyes were.

He was there every day, haunting the same bookshelves as she was. Unlike her answer for the roses, he was easy to find. "The exotic beauty of an orchid, or the delicacy of a wildflower?" she heard him muse once to himself as he considered two volumes before him and she wondered fascinated, if he had fallen in love with a blossom.

Without even knowing it, she found herself glancing around for him each time she came for her own search and when at last she found her answer—the soil it seemed was doing poorly and the books recommended adding ashes for nourishment—she was surprised to find herself thinking a little regretfully of the boy whose name she had never learned, the boy who seemed to know where to find any plant within the library.

As Freya shelved the last of the books she had removed, she felt a figure brush by her like a breeze. It was him, walking down the aisle behind her. He plucked a book from its shelf and began skimming through the closely printed words of the index. He did not even seem to see her, so desperate was he in his search although she only stood a few feet away, and she wished suddenly she could help him.

"Are you trying to find a flower?" she asked and he looked up, startled, shedding words from his eyes. "It must be very important to you for you to search so carefully."

He glanced at her face before returning to the book in his hands, speaking to its pages, "I'm trying to find a name for something I've seen but never understood."

"Oh, I know what you mean!" Her words had caught his attention again, and his eyes which had resumed scanned the index paused. "When I was a little girl I thought violets were irises and irises a mystery. I never could look at them quite the same way after I figured out which was which."

"And how did you find the answer?"

"When I went to buy them at the florist's and received something I hadn't expected."

"Well, that's useless to me," the boy declared, snapping shut the book he had held, and she stepped back startled. Abruptly, he turned his back to her, exchanging one fat volume of _Wild Flowers_ for another.

For some reason she could not quite name, she felt a little disappointed. She had even found the answer she had been looking for, had found a way to help her roses, and wouldn't have to enter this dark, lifeless place again. But she still did not know the color of his eyes. There had only been glass.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Should be working, yet here I am writing. But it felt like if I didn't take a break, I'd go mad.

I found out to my surprise that "malen" means "to paint" in German. Also, as a heads up, Autor's not going to end up with anyone in particular at the end of this fic—it's more an exploration of possible encounters. As for Malen not knowing Rue's name, I'm being lazy and going for the story's-ending-magically-messing-with-everyone's-memory. Or something.

Next one will be more Autor-centric, I promise. Mostly because I couldn't write Femio pov even if I wanted to.

* * *

It was all because of the charcoal, Malen was certain.

She had been overcome by artist's block lately—nothing seemed to be a fitting subject, her colors were never quite right, and it felt like there was just no inspiration in the whole world, and worse still, there might never be again. There was nothing she just _had_ to draw; that itch in her palm for a brush, a pencil, anything just so she could capture the image before her eyes, the image in her mind, was gone and everything she tried to force the feeling back had brought the most awful mediocre results that she couldn't bring herself to see through to the end.

In a last desperate bid for inspiration, she had been paging through her portfolio from last semester when she found them, her collection of charcoal sketches. She had taken to acrylics lately, with a palette so varied it had been like a dream at first, and had forgotten her first love had always been the simplicity of charcoal on a blank sheet, light and dark alone.

A face caught her eye, elegant raven black hair, porcelain skin. Curiously, she couldn't place the model in her memory with any sort of precision, but as she looked at the sketch, all of a sudden, she needed them, black and white stark against each other, needed to draw. Before she could lose the feeling, she grabbed her sketchbook and a case of charcoal and rushed off in search of shadows. Catching sight of the Academy library with its widely spaced towering windows, she knew she had found just what she wanted. Malen slipped through the library doors, her sketchbook clutched to her chest.

Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness within as she walked about until she found what she was looking for: high windows, few and far between, flooded with so much light that it cast all else in even greater darkness than if there had been no windows at all.

She lost herself in light, she lost herself in paper. She wasn't sure when she'd found a seat, when she'd opened to blank page, when she'd selected the stick of charcoal that was now turning her fingers sooty.

Malen paused suddenly in the middle of a stroke, interrupting the soft rhythmic scratching of the charcoal, and looked up from the paper to the window to make sure the too-bright sunlight wasn't playing tricks on her eyes. There. Just at the edge of darkness, between light and shadow there was a figure so fully cast in shadow, had it not been for the light on his glasses, she might not have seen him at all. His book splayed open in the streaming light, he seemed to exist at the edge, on the very border of worlds and the artist within Malen thrilled. Light and shadow within light and shadow. The boy on the edge of blades of sunlight. She felt excitement curl through her and found a fresh page hastily and began over, eyes only for him.

She drew him again and again and again, wanted to draw nothing else, and fretted over just what had come over her...When she found herself wanting to draw him on cloudy days, on rainy days, by the dim glow of lamps, she knew it wasn't just the artist in her infatuated by the starkness of the light and dark she had first seen him in.

Watercolors, pen and ink, any and every medium she could think of, Malen tried them all, in a sort of desperate bid to rid herself of the infatuation, but always she found herself returning to the spare, dark strokes of charcoal, to varying shades of gray, to the boy whose name, she learned by peering into the library books he returned, was Autor. It was the way expressions flitted across his face as he read, as if he were talking to someone else. It was the way he carefully adjusted his glasses every time he closed a book, and Malen found herself subconsciously mimicking him and adjusting her own. It was the way he read as desperately as she drew him reading.

There was no helping it, she told herself resignedly, putting away her things for the day. And somehow, before she had managed to close it, she clumsily knocked her portfolio off the library table and all its contents splayed across the library floor.

Malen grabbed hastily at all those sketches of him that fluttered about her, too horrified to glance up and see his appalled expression. She had never even thought to approach the subject of her drawings, let alone speak to him; she was more than happy to sketch him from afar. And now this! He would think she was some kind of _stalker_! She was so mortified she wished she could sink into the ground, turn to dust and charcoal right there. But when she at last dared to peek in his direction, it seemed he hadn't even noticed and she was so relieved she slowed her frantic gathering. She rose to put away all the incriminating drawings before returning to pick up the rest.

Surprisingly, it was then he looked up. Closing his book, he adjusted his glasses always and then his hand stilled and fell to his side, his eye caught by a familiar profile looking up at him from the ground. And there she was, in so many poses in so many perspectives staring back at him with mysterious charcoal eyes.

Before Malen knew it, he was kneeling with her now, fingers reaching out reverently for a drawing. It was the drawing she herself had looked at weeks ago and been enchanted enough by to pick up charcoals once more. "Where did you find these?" he demanded, "Do you know her true name?"

"I drew them," Malen answered hesitatingly, considering the ballerina that danced across her sketches. "Or at least I think I did," she added with a perplexed expression. "It's my hand certainly. This line here, I never can get fingers just right around the knuckles." Somehow those few sentences had opened a floodgate. It made Malen blush and curse her shyness to think about it afterward, how she had rambled. She was always struggling to build up the courage to say that first word, but then when it had been uttered, anxiety let so many more escape and now...now he must think her nothing more than an idiot and a babbling, forgetful one too.

"But I don't remember drawing any of these at all," she had rambled on, "and there are just so many I can't imagine how it's possible for me to have forgotten drawing them, or her. She must be in the ballet division, but when I went to look around, I didn't see anyone like her and I didn't want to trouble anyone by asking...."

Malen had at last trailed off, realizing that this whole time, he had not once taken his eyes off the drawing of the mystery ballerina. The whole world seemed to have vanished for him, he was so utterly mesmerized by her. Of course he would be mesmerized by her—she was beautiful, striking, her eyes stormy even when she smiled, her every line shaded with elegance. Malen must have been half in love with the subject of those sketches herself to have drawn so many.

"Do you know her?" Malen asked at last.

"I only thought I did," he answered with that same wistful expression she had so often seen on his face as he read through his endless pile of books.

Malen felt suddenly overcome by her own inadequacy, her own mousiness. She was not the girl in the sketch, she never would be But his own heartbreak seemed to mirror her own so closely, she found herself offering him the drawing that he held so carefully. He loved the ballerina, she could tell, and perhaps, she allowed herself to hope, he loved the drawing too.


End file.
